Leveraging Partnerships to Promote Healthy Communities

Featuring representatives from APA’s Planning and Community Health Center, the American Institute of Architects, the American Public Health Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Green Building Council, the panelists introduced the Joint Call to Action to Promote Healthy Communities.

Released earlier this year, the Call to Action engages 450,000 professionals from eight national organizations who recognize that the built environment — the way a community is designed and built from its buildings and public spaces to how we travel between communities — is a key determinant of health.

United by the common objective of creating and sustaining healthy buildings and spaces, the panelists described the four pillars of the partnership:

Build Relationships

Establish Health Goals

Implement Strategies to Improve Health

Share Expertise

While each national organization brings members with unique skills and areas of expertise, it is the power of collaboration and the connections across projects that will ensure communities are designed in ways that make the healthy choice the easy choice. Emphasizing the importance of community engagement and highlighting the unintended consequences of planning and design, the Call to Action is rooted in equity. The voices of those most impacted by built environment improvements must be part of the conversation.

Advancing the pillars through the implementation of evidence-based interventions is essential to making the case to business owners, local leaders, and citizens alike. Sharing the recently release recommendations from the Community Preventive Services Task Force, CDC representative Chris Kochtitzky relayed the findings of the systematic review of 90 studies:

Physical activity increased among individuals in communities with new or improved projects or policies combining transportation (e.g., pedestrian or cycling paths) with land use and design components (e.g., access to public parks).

Combinations of activity-supportive built environment characteristics were associated with higher levels of transportation-related physical activity, recreational physical activity, and total walking among exposed individuals.

Planners, as conveners and systems thinkers, are integral to the Call to Action and to advancing a comprehensive approach to healthy community design — and positive changes have already resulted from collaborative activities. APA’s Plan4Health initiative has brought together planners, public health professionals and community stakeholders to improve access to healthy foods and increase opportunities for active living across the country.